Interface for MonkeyLogic

MonkeyLogic is a behavioral control and data acquisition system written in Matlab. It is used in many non-human primate laboratories and is rapidly being adopted as a replacement for NIMH Cortex. Although MonkeyLogic is not a true real-time system like DOS Cortex, it is fast enough for most behavioral work and can integrate with real-time data acquisitions systems commonly used in behavioral neurophysiology (e.g., Plexon, TDT, Alpha-Omega). We have assembled a few different interface boxes for MonkeyLogic. This page describes two of them.

Description

The most common version of the interface box supplies 5 analog inputs, 2 analog outputs, 16 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs. The current interface box supports a single I/O card (the previous generation required 2x cards), an operational mode used by MonkeyLogic to provide near real-time performance with analog signals. Simply by going to a larger box (or a rack-mount front panel), we have expanded the analog inputs to 12 channels. We use the National Instruments NI-PCI-6229 board, which supports a high analog and digital channel count. The current interface box has one (1) cable, that attaches to the 6229 I/O board. This same configuration also works with with some of the less expensive PCI boards. One advantage of the 6229 board however is that it has an extra 24 digital bits. These bits are available through an additional connector on the I/O card. In the previous generation we used this second connector (on the first I/O card) to send 15- or 16-bit event codes to our TDT data collection system. The interface box for the additional bits is called a Digital Expansion box. See the documentation below for details.

Inside view of the previous generation MonkeyLogic1 interface box. Two NI-CB-68LPR terminal boards are used to support the dual-card operation of MonkeyLogic. Photos of the current MonkeyLogic2 interface box will be posted soon but schematics are now available (link below).